n S 


^ebentp4tftl) 

annibersarp 

Series 


Latin-America 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https;//archive.org/details/caseformissionsiOOspee_0 


THE  CASE  FOR  MISSIONS 
IN  LATIN  AMERICA 

ROBERT  E.  SPEER 


Our  concern  is  with  Latin  America.  Let 
us  ask  and  answer  four  questions.  (1)  Are 
our  missions  in  Latin  American  lands  legiti- 
mate and  necessary?  (2)  If  so,  can  they  be 
conducted  without  encountering  the  antagon- 
ism of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Latin 
America  and  in  the  United  States?  (3)  If 
not,  what  course  are  we  to  pursue?  (4)  If 
we  are  to  go  forward  with  the  missions  how 
are  we  to  get  for  them  that  interest  and  sup- 
port at  home  to  which  they  are  entitled,  not 
less  than  our  missions  in  Asia  and  Africa? 

I. 

Are  our  missions  in  Latin  American  lands 
legitimate  and  necessary?  We  , answer  yes, 
and  for  the  following  reasons : 

(1)  The  moral  condition  of  the  South 
American  countries  warrants  and  demands 
the  presence  of  those  forms  of  evangelical  re- 
ligion which  will  war  against  sin  and  bring 
men  the  power  of  righteous  life. 

According  to  the  census  of  Brazil  in  1890, 
2,603,489  or  between  one-fifth  and  one-sixth 
of  the  population  are  returned  as  illegitimate. 
In  Ecuador  Mr.  Curtis  says  that  more  than 
one-half  of  the  population  are  of  illegitimate 
birth.  At  one  time  in  Paraguay,  after  the 
long  wars,  it  was  estimated  that  the  percen- 
tage of  illegitimate  births  was  over  90  per 
cent.  In  Venezuela,  according  to  the  official 
statistics  for  1906,  there  were  that  year  47,606 
illegitimate  births,  or  68.8  per  cent.  In  Chile 
the  general  percentage  is  33  per  cent,  and  the 
1 


highest  in  any  department  a little  over  66  per 
cent.  In  England  the  percentage  is  6 per  cent., 
and  in  France  and  Belgium  7 per  cent.  In 
Bolivia,  on  four  random  pages  of  the  Military 
Register  of  the  Republic,  I counted  15S  names; 
of  these  names  97  are  stated  to  be  legitimate 
and  61,  or  38.6  per  cent.,  illegitimate.  There 
is  no  shame  about  the  matter  in  this  Register. 
The  names  of  father  and  mother  and  their 
occupations  are  given  in  the  case  of  each 
illegitimate  born,  as  well  as  in  the  case  of  the 
legitimate.  In  Uruguay  in  1906,  27^4  per  cent, 
of  the  births  were  illegitimate.  In  South 
America,  as  a whole,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
from  one-fourth  to  one-half  of  the  population 
is  illegitimate.  “Male  chastity,”  says  Mr. 

Hale,  now  connected,  I believe,  with  the 

Bureau  of  American  Republics,  in  his  very 
temperate  and  fair-minded  book,  “The  South 
Americans,”  “Male  chastity  is  practically 
unknown.” 

It  is  the  right  and  duty  of  evangelical 
Christianity  to  go  in  with  morally  cleansing 
power  upon  this  moral  need. 

(2)  The  Protestant  missionary  enterprise 

with  its  stimulus  to  education  and  its  appeal 
to  the  rational  nature  of  man  is  required  by 
the  intellectual  needs  of  South  America. 

There  is  a brilliant  upper  class,  many  of 
whom  have  been  educated  abroad,  but  the 
continent  may  justly  be  called  an  illiterate 
continent.  The  educational  systems  are  worthy 
of  no  small  praise,  but  they  want  conscience, 
adaptation,  morality,  and  especially  is  there 
need  of  the  solid  education  of  the  masses  of 
the  people.  In  1901,  70  per  cent,  of  the  con- 
scripts for  the  Chilean  army  could  neither 
read  nor  write.  The  proportion  of  illiteracy 
in  the  recruits  for  the  German  army  is  .04 
per  cent.  In  Brazil,  the  census  of  1890  re- 
turned 12,213,346  of  the  population,  or  approxi- 
mately 85  per  cent.,  as  illiterate.  In  Chile, 
1,951,061  were  returned  in  1907  as  illiterate,  or 
approximately  60  per  cent.  These  two 
countries  would  dispute  with  Argentine  the 
2 


3 


Market  Scene  in 


first  place  in  educational  enterprise.  And  in 
Argentine  50.5  per  cent,  of  the  population  over 
six  years  of  age  and  in  Bolivia  nearly  80  per 
cent,  of  the  population  over  seven  years  of  age 
are  illiterate. 

Agencies  which  will  bring  home  to  these 
nations  the  duty  of  educating  all  the  people 
and  of  doing  it  with  sincere  thoroughness,  of 
setting  right  standards,  and  of  relating  re- 
ligion rightly  to  education,  are  justified  in 
extending  their  help  to  South  America. 

(3)  Protestant  missions  are  justified  in 
South  America  in  order  to  give  the  Bible  to 
the  people. 

There  are  Roman  Catholic  translations  of 
the  Bible  both  in  Spanish  and  in  Portuguese, 
but  the  Roman  Church  has  discouraged  or 
forbidden  their  use.  Again  and  again  priests 
have  burned  the  Bibles  sold  by  colporteurs  or 
missionaries  even  when  they  were  the  Roman 
Catholic  versions.  Again  and  again  they  have 
denounced  the  missionaries  for  circulating  the 
Scriptures  and  have  driven  them  ont  of  vil- 
lages where  they  were  so  employed,  and  have 
even  secured  their  arrest.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  not  one  person  out  of  a thousand  in 
South  America  would  ever  have  seen  a Bible 
but  for  the  Protestant  missionary  movement. 
The  priests  themselves  are  ignorant  of  it.  A 
few  ecclesiastics,  like  the  one  Roman  Catholic 
cardinal  in  South  America  who  was  formerly 
the  Archbishop  of  Brazil,  have  written  approv- 
ingly of  the  circulation  of  the  Bible  in  Portu- 
guese, but  nothing  has  been  done  by  his 
Church  to  promote  the  circulation  in  Span- 
ish, which  is  the  language  of  two-thirds  of 
South  America.  The  Archbishop  of  Bogota 
requires  all  who  have  Bibles  in  their  posses- 
sion to  deliver  them  up  to  their  priests.  Only 
a few  months  ago,  the  priest  in  the  church  on 
the  main  plaza  in  Chilian,  where  the  great 
markets  are  held,  boasted  openly  in  church  of 
having  burned  seven  Bibles. 

The  circulation  of  the  Bible  in  South 
America  is  still  dependent  upon  the  Bible 
4 


Societies  and  the  Protestant  missionaries.  If 
it  were  not  for  them  the  people  of  South 
America  would  to-day  be  without  the  Bible. 
Is  it  wrong  to  give  it  to  them?  Must  we 
justify  a movement  without  which  40,000,000 
people  would  be  ignorant  of  the  Bible? 

(4)  Protestant  missions  are  justified  and 
demanded  in  South  America  by  the  character 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  priesthood. 

I fought  as  long  as  possible  against  accept- 
ing the  opinion  universally  held  throughout 
South  America  regarding  the  priests.  Ever  since 
reading  as  a boy  the  “Life  of  Charles  Kings- 
ley,” the  enforced  celibacy  of  the  priesthood 
had  seemed  to  me  a monstrous  and  wicked 
theory,  but  I had  believed  that  the  men  who 
took  that  vow  were  true  to  it,  and  that  while 
the  Church  lost  by  it  irreparably  and  infinitely 
more  than  she  gained,  she  did  gain  neverthe- 
less a pure  and  devoted,  even  if  a narrow  and 
impoverished,  service.  But  the  deadly  evi- 
dence spread  out  all  over  South  America,  con- 
fronting one  in  every  district  to  which  he  goes, 
evidence  legally  convincing,  morally  sickening, 
proves  that,  whatever  may  be  the  case  in  other 
lands,  in  South  America  the  stream  of  the 
Church  is  polluted  at  its  fountains. 

(5)  Protestant  missions  in  South  America 
are  justified  because  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  not  given  the  people  Christianity. 

There  are  surely  some  who  find  peace  and 
comfort  and  some  who  see  Christ  through  all 
that  hides  Him  and  misrepresents  Him,  but  the 
testimony  of  the  most  temperate  and  open- 
minded  of  the  men  and  women  who  were  once 
themselves  earnest  Roman  Catholics  is  that 
there  are  few  whom  they  know  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  who  know  the  facts  of 
Christ’s  life  and  fewer  still  who  know  Christ. 
The  crucifixes,  of  which  South  America  is 
full,  inadequately  represent  the  Gospel.  They 
show  a dead  man,  not  a living  Saviour.  We 
did  not  see  in  all  the  churches  we  visited  a 
single  symbol  or  suggestion  of  the  resurrec- 
tion or  the  ascension.  There  were  hundreds 
5 


6 


Ox-cart  in  Chile  street 


of  paintings  of  saints  and  of  the  Holy  Family 
and  of  Mary,  but  not  one  of  the  supreme 
event  in  Christianity.  And  even  the  dead 
Christ  is  the  subordinate  figure.  The  central 
place  is  Mary’s.  Often  she  is  shown  holding  a 
small  lacerated  dead  figure  in  her  lap,  and 
often  she  is  the  only  person  represented  at  all. 
In  the  great  La  Merced  church  in  Lima,  over 
the  whole  chancel  is  the  motto : “Gloria  a 
Maria.”  In  the  oldest  church  in  Barranquilla, 
there  was  no  figure  of  Christ  at  all  in  the  altar 
equipment,  but  Mary  without  the  infant  in  the 
centre,  two  other  figures  on  either  side,  and 
over  all  “Gloria  a Maria.”  In  the  wall  of  the 
ancient  Jesuit  Church  in  Cuzco,  known  as  the 
Church  of  the  Campania,  are  cut  the  words, 
“Come  unto  Mary  all  ye  who  are  burdened 
and  weary  with  your  sins  and  she  will  give 
you  rest.”  They  are  many,  I am  sure,  who 
learn  to  love  and  reverence  the  name  of 
Christ,  but  Christ  as  a living  moral  and  spir- 
itual power  the  South  American  religion  does 
not  proclaim. 

(6)  Protestant  missions  * are  justified  in 
South  America  because  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  at  the  same  time  so  strong  and  so 
weak  there. 

The  priesthood  has  a powerful  hold  upon 
the  superstition  of  the  people.  As  we  rode 
along  one  day  in  Brazil  in  a drizzling  rain 
with  bare  heads  and  rubber  ponchos,  an  old 
woman  came  running  solicitously  from  her 
hovel,  mistaking  us  for  priests  and  crying,  “O 
most  powerful  God,  where  is  your  hat?”  To 
the  people  the  priest  stands  in  the  place  of 
God,  and  even  where  his  own  life  is  vile  the 
people  distinguish  between  his  function  as 
priest  in  which  he  stands  as  God  before  the 
altar,  and  his  life  as  man  in  which  he  falls 
into  the  frailties  of  the  flesh.  Not  only  is  the 
priesthood  the  most  influential  body  in  South 
America,  but  the  Church  has  a hold  upon 
politics  and  family  life  and  society  which  is 
paralyzing.  Its  evil  is  not  weak  and  harm- 
less but  pervasive  and  deadly,  and  the  Chris- 
7 


tian  Church  is  called  by  the  most  mandatory 
sanctions  to  deal  with  the  situation.  But  on 
the  other  hand  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
does  not  have  a fraction  of  the  strength  and 
power  in  South  America  which  we  had  sup- 
posed it  had,  and  the  inefficiency  of  its  work 
is  pitiful.  With  enormous  resources,  with 
all  the  lines  of  power  in  its  hands,  it  has 
steadily  lost  ground.  The  churches,  save  on 
festivals,  are  mostly  ill-attended.  The  priests 
are  derided  and  reviled.  The  leading  news- 
paper in  Chile,  which  bitterly  attacked  some 
statements  which  I made  upon  returning  about 
the  character  of  the  priests,  a few  weeks  later 
printed  a denunciation  of  the  priests  in  north- 
ern Chile  more  sweeping  than  anything  I 
had  said.  The  comic  papers  gibe  at  them. 
This  spectacle  of  a continent  of  men  losing 
all  respect  for  religion  and  leaving  it  to  women 
and  to  priests,  whose  moral  character  they 
despise  and  whose  religious  character  they  de- 
ride, is  a grave  and  distressing  spectacle. 
There  is  no  sadder  sight  to  be  found  in  the 
whole  world. 

The  religious  teachers  of  South  America 
have  made  the  men  of  the  continent  irreligious. 
They  have  discovered  that  what  was  taught 
them  is  false  and  with  that  discovery  they 
have  flung  away  the  faith  which  they  now 
call  superstition.  One  cannot  but  feel  toward 
them  as  the  author  of  “Ecce  Homo”  felt 
toward  the  Pharisees.  ‘Tt  would  be  better 
that  the  Jews  should  have  no  teachers  of  wis- 
dom at  all  than  that  they  should  have  teachers 
who  should  give  them  folly  under  the  name  of 
wisdom.  Better  that  in  the  routine  of  a labor- 
ious life  they  should  hear  of  wisdom  as  a 
thing  more  costly  than  pearls  but  beyond  their 
reach,  than  that  it  should  seem  to  be  brought 
within  their  reach  and  they  should  discover 
it  to  be  paste  ...  If  a divine  revelation 
be  the  greatest  of  blessings,  then  the  imposture 
that  counterfeits  it  must  be  the  greatest  of 
all  evils.”  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  the 
morality  of  the  view  which  would  deliver  the 
whole  situation  in  South  America  to  the 
8 


Cross  supposed  to  possess  healing  powers,  San  Paulo,  Brazil. 
The  cross  is  covered  with  representations  of  things  connected 
with  Christ’s  betrayal  and  crucifixion:  the  cock  that  crowed, 
the  nails,  the  spears,  etc. 

agency  which  has  created  it,  an  agency  whose 
influence  unless  reformed  from  without  is 
waning  for  everything  but  evil. 

(7)  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  South 
America  needs  the  Protestant  missionary 
movement. 

There  is  good  in  that  Church  in  South 
America.  There  are  good  men  and  women  in 
it.  In  spite  of  the  falsehoods  and  vicious 
elements  in  it,  there  is  truth  also.  That  the 
good  in  it  may  triumph  over  the  evil,  there  is 
need  of  external  stimulus  and  puriflcation. 
u 


The  presence  of  Protestant  missions  alone 
will  shame  the  Church  into  a self-clcansing 
and  introduce  the  forces,  or  support  whatever 
inner  forces  there  may  already  be,  which  may 
correct  and  vivify  it.  There  are  some  who 
think  the  South  American  religious  system  is 
simply  to  be  swept  away,  that  it  cannot  be  re- 
formed, but  there  is  another  view  open  to  us 
and  that  is  that  against  whatever  odds  and 
with  whatever  deep  cutting  excisions  the  good 
may  be  strengthened  and  enabled  to  eliminate 
the  evil.  Already  Protestant  missions  have 
wrought  great  changes.  They  are  altering, 
in  Chile  and  Brazil  at  least,  the  ostensible 
attitude  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  toward 
the  Bible.  They  have  been  among  the  in- 
fluences which  have  secured  a very  fair  text 
book  of  Sacred  History  in  the  public  schools 
in  Chile.  They  have  elevated  the  standard  of 
education  in  the  schools  conducted  by  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  and  have  greatly 
stimulated  that  Church  in  its  establishment  of 
schools.  “His  praiseworthy  efforts,”  says  the 
ex-Minister  of  Justice  and  Public  Instruction 
in  the  Argentine,  Dr.  Federico  Pinedo,  of 
Mr.  Morris,  the  founder  of  the  Argentine 
Evangelical  Schools,  “have  had  the  virtue  of 
awakening  the  Catholics,  who'  not  to  be  left 
behind,  have  also  founded  numerous  schools, 
so  that  in  every  way  the  most  needy  children 
are  being  benefited.”  They  have  steadily 
widened  the  sphere  of  freedom  and  hedged  in 
the  Church  more  and  more  to  a true  Church 
ideal.  To  restrain  or  abate  the  forces  which 
have  done  all  this  is  not  an  act  of  true  friend- 
ship toward  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  It 
is  a betrayal  of  her  best  interests  and  her  best 
men  and  women  who  need  all  the  help  that 
can  be  sent  from  without  to  cleanse  the  South' 
American  soul  and  to  purge  its  chief 
institution. 

(8)  And  lastly,  though  it  seems  to  me  that 
I have  only  begun  the  argument,  evangelical 
Christianity  is  warranted  in  going  to  South 
America  because  it  alone  can  meet  the  needs 
of  the  Latin  American  nations. 

10 


Many  leading  men  in  South  America  realize 
this.  Again  and  again  South  American  states- 
men or  governments  have  sought  from  Protest- 
ant lands  what  they  recognized  could  come 
alone  from  them.  The  Argentine  Government 
gave  $1,000  gold  toward  the  present  building 
of  the  American  Church  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
When  Sarmiento  became  president  of  Argen- 
tina he  commissioned  Dr.  Goodfellow,  a mis- 
sionary returning  to  the  United  States,  to 
send  out  a number  of  educated  women  to 
open  Normal  Schools.  Evangelical  Christianity 
is  required  to  meet  the  intellectual,  moral  and 
social  needs  of  South  America  as  well  as  its 
religious  necessities.  'Fundamentally,  it  is 
demanded  by  their  moral  necessities.  The 
South  American  Church  system  has  not  met 
these.  It  has  produced  them.  It  has  resulted 
in  stagnant  populations,  some  of  which  have 
diminished  in  numbers.  It  has  inspired  no 
moral  reform.  It  has  created  no  solid  basis 
of  commercial  and  political  character.  If  has 
done  nothing  to  uplift  the  Indians.  Its  great 
wealth  has  been  employed  neither  in  education 
nor  in  works  of  charity.  Its  philanthropies 
are  insignificant  in  comparison  with  those  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  United 
States.  The  power  which  Protestant  missions 
alone  can  introduce  is  needed  to  awaken  a 
benevolent  love  of  the  unfortunate  and  the 
needy,  and  to  make  the  character  without 
which  free  institutions  cannot  endure  and  the 
resources  of  nations  must  lie  undeveloped. 

In  the  discussion  over  the  religious  rights 
of  foreigners  in  the  Argentine,  Alberdi,  a 
publicist  and  an  advocate  of  freedom,  resisted 
the  idea  of  excluding  this  power  from  his 
country.  “Spanish  America,”  he  wrote,  “re- 
duced to  Catholicism,  with  the  exclusion  of 
any  other  cult,  represents  a solitary  and  silent 
convent  of  monks.  The  dilemma  is  fatal — 
either  Catholics  and  unpopulated,  or  populated 
and  prosperous  and  tolerant  in  the  matter  of 
religion.  To  invite  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  and 
the  people  of  Germany,  Sweden  and  Switzer- 
land and  deny  them  the  exercise  of  their  wor- 
11 


'' 


Procession  of  Corpus  Christi,  Bogota,  Colombia. 


12 


ship  is  to  offer  them  a sham  hospitality  and 
to  exhibit  a false  liberalism.  To  exclude  the 
dissenting  cults  from  South  America  is  to 
exclude  the  English,  the  German,  the  Irish 
and  the  North  American,  who  are  not  Catho- 
lics, that  is  to  say,  the  inhabitants  whom  this 
continent  most  needs.  To  bring  them  without 
their  cult  is  to  bring  them  without  the  agent 
that  makes  them  what  they  are,  and  to  compel 
them  to  live  without  religion  and  to  become 
atheists.^' 

The  power  which  gave  these  people  what 
good  they  have  and  which  sustains  the  moral 
element  in  their  national  character  is  the  power 
which  South  America  needs.  The  Protestant 
mission  is  the  main  channel  through  which  it 
is  to  be  given.  Eet  me  put  this  last  considera- 
tion in  the  words  of  the  Anglican  Bishop  of 
Argentina,  whose  seat  is  in  Buenos  Ayres 
and  whose  work  lays  on  him  the  burden 
of  South  America’s  real  need.  “The  needs  of 
South  America,”  says  he.  “How  great  and 
pathetic  they  are ! The  world’s  empty  con- 
tinent— the  hope  of  the  future — the  home  to 
be  of  millions  of  Europeans,  who  are  already 
beginning  to  flow  there  in  a steady  stream— 
it  is  without  true  religion,  and  does  not 
realize  its  danger ! The  form  of  the  faith 
prevalent  is  the  weakest  and  most  corrupt 
known,  and  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
rising  young  nationalities  of  the  continent 
can  long  be  content  with  it.  Indeed  they  are 
not  content  with  it  now.  Yet  a faith  they 
must  have.  What  hope  is  there  for  Argen- 
tine, for  example,  that  Spanish-speaking 
United  States  of  the  future,  without  true  re- 
ligion? Of  what  use  are  vast  material  re- 
sources, rapid  development,  wealth,  knowl- 
edge, power,  without  that?  Surely  God  has  a 
place  in  the  world  for  these  brilliant  Southern 
races.  They  are  still  full  of  vitality.  We  have 
no  right  to  speak  of  them  as  effete  and  played 
out,  especially  when  we  know  the  marvelous 
recuperative  power  of  the  human  race.  Well, 
where  should  this  place  of  development  be 
but  in  the  free  air  and  temperate  climate  and 
13 


wide  spaces  of  the  New  World,  far  from  the 
social  tyrannies  and  religious  superstitions 
which  have  hitherto  retarded  their  proper 
growth?  It  is  nothing  less  than  axiomatic 
that  South  America  needs  true  religion,  if  its 
future  history  is  not  to  be  a disappointment 
and  its  development  a failure.  . . . 

“South  America  needs  what  Christian  Eng' 
land,  if  the  Church  were  but  moved  with 
more  faith  and  love,  could  easily  give — true 
religion,  viz..  Reformed  Scriptural,  Apostolic 
Christianity.  Our  own  people  need  it,  that  they 
may  be  saved  from  only  too  possible  degrada- 
tion. The  Spanish  and  Portuguese-speaking 
people  need  it,  that  they  may  develop  into 
the  strong  free  nations  they  desire  to  be.  The 
aboriginal  races  of  Indians  need  it,  that  they 
may  be  saved  from  extinction  and  find  their 
place,  too,  in  the  kingdom  of  God.’’ 

If  missionary  work  is  not  warranted  and 
demanded  in  conditions  like  these,  where  is 
it  legitimate? 


II. 

But  if  our  missions  in  Latin  America  are 
justified  and  necessary,  can  they  he  conducted 
without  encountering  the  antagonism  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Latin  America  and 
in  the  United  States? 

Well,  as  a matter  of  fact,  they  do  not 
escape  and  never  have  escaped  this  antagon- 
ism, no  matter  what  the  care  and  spirit  with 
which  they  have  been  conducted.  I could 
quote  criticisms  by  Roman  Catholics  of  the 
American  Episcopal  Missions  in  Brazil  and 
the  Philippines,  although  in  the  latter  the 
Mission  has  sought  carefully  to  protect  itself 
from  the  suspicion  of  proselytizing  among  the 
Roman  Catholic  Filipinos.  And  you  all  know 
how  the  Protestant  missions  in  all  parts  of 
Latin  America  have  been  assailed  by  the 
Roman  Church  and  how  the  organs  of  the 
Church  in  the  United  States  have  dealt  with 
any  who  have  dared  to  state  the  facts  regard- 
14 


15 


Church  and  Congregation  at  Mandary,  Parana,  Brazil. 


ing  Latin  American  conditions.  Now  is  all 
this  inevitable? 

History  helps  us  to  answer  this  question. 
There  was  a time  when  in  the  Philippines  and 
in  all  Latin  America  there  was  no  religious 
liberty,  no  free  speech,  no  public  education, 
no  civil  marriage,  no  burial  rites  or  interment 
in  a cemetery  for  a Protestant,  no  valid  bap- 
tism for  Protestant  children  and  consequently 
in  some  lands  no  right  of  inheritance.  These 
intolerable  conditions  have  passed  away.  Did 
they  pass  away  without  the  antagonism  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church?  It  fought  every 
one  of  these  reforms.  It  is  fighting  some  of 
them  still.  Not  one  advance  has  been  made 
toward  free  institutions  and  free  education 
and  freedom  of  opinion  and  speech  and  re- 
ligion in  Latin  America  without  encountering 
the  relentless  opposition  of  the  Roman  organ- 
ization. In  1852,  the  Pope  denounced  the 
movement  in  New  Granada  toward  religious 
liberty,  which  decreed  the  expulsion  of  the 
Jesuits,  a curtailment  of  Church  revenues,  free 
education,  freedom  of  the  press  and  freedom 
of  public  and  private  worship.  These  “nefari- 
ous decrees,”  the  Pope  condemned  and  de- 
clared to  be  “null  and  void.”  In  October, 
1864,  Pius  liX  wrote  to  Maximilian,  “Your 
majesty  is  well  aware  that  in  order  effectively 
to  repair  the  evil  occasioned  by  the  revolu- 
tion and  to  bring  back  as  soon  as  possible 
happy  days  for  the  Church,  the  Catholic 
religion  must  above  all  things  continue  to  be 
the  glory  and  mainstay  of  the  Mexican  nation 
to  the  exclusion  of  every  other  dissenting  wor- 
ship; that  the  bishops  must  be  perfectly  free 
in  the  exercise  of  their  pastoral  ministry; 
that  the  religious  orders  should  be  re-estab- 
lished or  reorganized ; that  no  person  may 
obtain  the  faculty  of  teaching  false  and  sub- 
versive tenets ; that  instruction,  whether  public 
or  private,  should  be  directed  and  watched 
over  by  the  ecclesiastical  authority,  and  that 
in  short  the  chains  may  be  broken  which  up 
to  the  present  time  have  held  the  Church  in  a 
state  of  self-dependence  and  subject  to  the 
16 


arbitrary  rule  of  civil  government/’  Now  if 
every  step  thus  far  toward  the  emancipation 
and  enlightenment  of  South  America  has  been 
antagonized  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
we  must  not  be  surprised  or  intimidated  if  we 
continue  to  meet  with  opposition. 

For  let  us  candidly  and  fearlessly  face  the 
real  facts.  It  is  very  well  to  seek  to  justify 
some  of  our  work  in  South  America  by  point- 
ing out  the  atheism  and  unbelief  which  needs 
to  be  dealt  with  and  also  the  great  aboriginal 
population  which  is  to  be  reached,  but  neither 
of  these  considerations  will  save  us  from  the 
opposition  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  for, 
as  the  recent  investigations  of  the  delegates 
from  the  English  Baptist  Church  have  shown 
and  as  all  who  have  looked  into  the  subject 
know,  the  work  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  South  America  claims  almost  all  the 
accessible  Indian  population,  so  that  our  work 
among  them  is  resented  by  the  Roman  Church 
as  much  as  work  for  the  rest  of  the  popula- 
tion, and,  curious  as  the  fact  may  appear,  the 
atheism  and  unbelief  and  immorality  of  South 
America  are  nominally  Roman  Catholic.  In 
no  South  American  country  have  the  men  of 
the  land  more  completely  thrown  off  religion 
than  in  the  Argentine,  and  yet  nominally  these 
men  are  Roman  Catholics  and  the  constitution 
of  the  Argentine  requires  that  the  President 
of  the  Republic  shall  be  a Roman  Catholic.  I 
believe  there  is  the  same  requirement  under 
similar  conditions  in  Uruguay.  In  Chile, 
where  a third  of  the  births  are  illegitimate  and 
60  per  cent,  of  the  population  is  illiterate,  the 
government  census  gives  98  per  cent,  of  the 
population  as  Roman  Catholics,  while  in 
Brazil,  where  the  government  census  of  1890 
gave  a percentage  of  illegitimacy  of  18  per 
cent,  and  of  illiteracy  of  80  per  cent.,  the 
official  returns  gave  98  per  cent,  of  the  people 
as  Roman  Catholics.  In  other  words, 
by  the  declaration  of  the  official  census  in 
Brazil  and  Chile,  practically  all  the  illegitimacy 
and  illiteracy  is  Roman  Catholic  illegitimacy 
and  illiteracy.  You  cannot  do  anything  for 
17 


18 


Going  from  Bahia  to  San  Felix  and  Cachoeira. 


the  people  of  Brazil  or  Chile  that  is  not  on  the 
face  of  it  work  for  Roman  Catholics.  We 
do  not  believe  that  that  fact  puts  them  beyond 
the  pale  of  enlightenment  and  makes  any 
effort  to  relieve  them  unwarrantable,  but  the 
simple  fact  cannot  be  escaped  that  whatever 
missions  are  operated  in  these  lands,  or  indeed 
in  any  Latin  American  lands,  are  operated 
among  nominal  Roman  Catholics ; for  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  claims  them  all  as 
its  own. 

And  the  situation  is  not  relieved  by  that 
view  of  our  mission  work  in  these  lands  which 
would  acquit  it  of  all  responsibility  for  estab- 
lishing Evangelical  churches  and  would  be 
satisfied  to  conduct  it  simply  as  a moral  and 
educational  influence,  seeking  by  its  example  to 
awaken  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  to  better 
standards  and  a purer  life.  The  Roman 
Catholic  Church  approves  of  such  Protestant 
missions  no  more  than  the  other  kind.  It  has 
opposed  such  work  as  earnestly  as  it  has 
fought  evangelistic  effort.  In  the  Argentine 
House  of  Deputies  it  assailed,  through  one  of 
its  bishops,  the  remarkable  schools  of  Mr. 
Morris  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  in  Brazil 
American  Catholics  have  lamented  the  work 
even  of  Protestant  institutions  which,  al- 
though in  this  they  were  in  error,  they  declared 
had  no  evangelistic  purpose  or  influence. 

As  a matter  of  fact  our  missions  are  wel- 
comed in  every  Latin  American  land,  but  not 
by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Both  in 
South  America  and  here  that  Church  stead- 
fastly resents  and  opposes  every  such  effort. 
We  may  lament  this.  We  may  believe,  as  I 
believe,  that  it  is  the  height  of  folly  for  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada  to  seek  to  deny  or  cloak  the  in- 
disputable facts  regarding  Latin  America. 
But  the  cold  truth  is  that  we  cannot  carry  on 
any  Protestant  work  of  any  sort  whatever  in 
Latin  America  without  encountering  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  both 
there  and  here. 


19 


III. 


If,  then,  this  opposition  is  unavoidable, 
what  course  are  we  to  pursue? 

(1)  We  are  to  do  our  duty.  It  is  our  duty 
to  minister  to  human  need.  We  are  to  main- 
tain our  missions  in  Latin  America  and  to  seek 
to  evangelize  the  people  of  Latin  America  with 
the  Christian  Gospel  just  as  we  seek  to  evan- 
gelize the  Japanese  Buddhist  sects  whose  doc- 
trines and  rites  are  scarcely  less  Christian 
than  those  of  many  of  the  Latin  American 
peoples. 

(2)  We  are  to  seek  to  build  up  Evangelical 
churches  in  Latin  America  and  to  receive  into 
these  churches  converted  men  and  women, 
whether  these  men  and  women  have  been 
nominal  Roman  Catholics  and  actual  atheists 
and  unbelievers,  or  whether  they  have  been 
open  repudiators  of  all  religion,  or  whether, 
as  will  usually  be  the  case,  they  are  men  and 
women  who  have  sought  for  moral  and 
spiritual  satisfaction  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  as  it  is  in  South  America  and  have 
been  disappointed.  Most  of  the  earnest  mem- 
bers of  the  Evangelical  Churches  in  Latin 
America  have  been  devout  Roman  Catholics 
who  were  discontented  with  their  vain  search 
for  life  and  peace.  If  it  is  said  that  this 
is  proselytism,  my  reply  is  that  I abhor 
proselytism  as  much  as  any  man  when  that 
proselytism  is  the  effort  to  win  a man  from 
one  form  of  Christian  faith  to  another,  but 
the  Latin  American  form  of  Christianity  is  so 
inadequate  and  misrepresentative  that  to 
preach  the  truth  to  it  is  not  proselytism,  but 
the  Christian  duty  of  North  American  Chris- 
tians both  Protestant  and  Catholic. 

(3)  We  are  to  pursue  in  all  this  work  the 
most  irenic  course.  We  are  not  to  attack  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  That  is  not  good 
policy  and  it  is  not  good  principle,  and  it  is 
to  many  of  us  practically  impossible.  We 
grew  up  here  with  many  friends  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  and  we  have  many  friends 

.20 


21 


Gateway  of  old  house  at  Areqoipa. 


in  it  now.  We  believe  that  here  and  even  in 
Latin  America  it  holds  some  great  funda- 
mental Christian  truths.  We  respect  the  piety 
and  consecration  of  many  of  its  men  and 
women.  We  are  appalled  at  the  mass  of  evil 
which  has  overcrusted  it  in  Latin  America, 
but  even  so  we  cannot  wage  a war  against  it. 
Our  purpose  and  desire  are  to  preach  Christ 
and  to  set  forth  the  positive  truth  in  love. 
This  course  will  result  in  the  destruction  of 
error.  Even  this  course  will  be  opposed  by 
the  Latin  American  Church,  but  nevertheless 
in  spite  of  such  opposition,  in  spite  of  the 
insults  and  slander  by  which  all  who  try  to 
show  the  actual  conditions  in  Latin  Anlerica 
will  be  assailed  in  the  United  States,  we  must 
not  be  provoked  into  unkindness  or  injustice 
toward  that  which  is  good  and  true  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  both  among  its  people 
and  among  its  leaders. 

(4)  We  must  be  patient  and  hopeful.  If 
we  have  the  truth  it  will  prevail,  and  all  the 
forces  of  human  progress  are  with  us.  In- 
deed, there  are  some  entirely  too  free  and 
radical  forces  awaking  within  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  or  among  the  Latin  American 
people.  We  must  beware  of  sympathy  with 
anti-clerical  movements  which  rest  on  prin- 
ciples which  are  anti-religious,  and  with 
tendencies  of  thought  which  not  only  destroy 
tradition  but  by  the  same  token  dissolve  his- 
tory. We  have  no  easy  path.  The  true  path 
is  never  easy  in  the  midst  of  conflicting  ex- 
tremes. To  be  a rank  partisan  is  far  simpler 
than  to  extricate  truth  from  error  in  antagon- 
istic views  and  to  travel  on  even  ways. 

(5)  We  must  recognize  sympathetically  the 
problem  with  which  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  to  deal.  It  is  stupendous.  One’s 
heart  goes  out  to  the  earnest  men  who  have 
to  bear  this  burden.  It  remains  to  be  seen 
whether  the  capacity  of  adjustment  to  new 
and  unavoidable  conditions  is  in  the  Church, 
or  whether  it  is  incapable  of  being  reformed. 
There  are  many  who  assert  that  it  is.  We 

22 


venture  to  believe  otherwise,  regarding  large 
sections  of  it  at  least,  though  in  other  large 
sections  a work  of  destruction  and  regenera- 
tion must  be  done  as  radical  almost  as  any 
needed  in  heathenism. 

IV. 

And  now,  lastly,  if  we  are  to  go  forward, 
in  this  spirit  of  good  will  and  friendliness 
with  undaunted  determination ; how  are  we 
to  get  for  these  missions  adequate  interest  and 
support  at  home? 

Those  who  are  now  interested  in  such  mis- 
sions are  interested,  as  a rule,  from  ultra- 
Protestant  and  militant  anti-Papan  convic- 
tions, and  their  argument  for  missions  in 
Latin  America  would  involve  as  an  inevitable 
corollary  a great  propaganda  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada  against  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  I do  not  believe  we  ought  to  take 
up  the  matter  in  this  way.  It  is  true  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States 
makes  it  very  difficult  to  take  it  up  in  any 
other  way.  It  insists  that  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic Church  is  one  in  all  lands  and  in  all 
ages,  and  that  to  state  what  we  know  to  be 
the  facts  about  Latin  America  is  to  libel 
and  attack  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
the  United  States  and  Canada.  This  is  a 
terrible  responsibility  to  assume,  and  one 
longs  for  the  day  when  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  our  land  will  be  as  bold  as  Cardinal 
Vaughan  and  Father  Sherman  and  many 
another  ecclesiastic  has  been,  and  denounce 
and  renounce  the  evils  and  abuses  which 
flourish  under  the  name  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  all  - Latin  America.  And  we  must 
anticipate  this  day  and  be  wise  enough  and 
generous  enough  not  to  allow  the  American 
and  Canadian  Roman  Catholics  to  shoulder 
the  shame  of  Latin  America  in  blind  denial 
of  indisputable  facts. 

Our  propaganda  must  be  carried  on,  I be- 
lieve, on  the  basis  of  these  facts,  namely,  the 

23 


conditions  of  need  in  Latin  America  which 
unanswerable  evidence  can  establish. 

(1)  First  of  all  we  must  set  forth  these 
conditions  and  prove  them  by  evidence  which 
cannot  be  gainsaid. 

Whenever  evidence  creeps  into  our  presen- 
tation which  can  be  gainsaid  or  disputed,  we 
are  in  danger  of  damaging  the  case  which 
must  be  made.  Such  faulty  evidence  cannot 
invalidate  the  sound  evidence,  but  it  diverts 
attention  and  it  compromises  the  argument. 
It  is  no  easy  matter  to  be  faultless  here 
when  we  review  all  the  testimony  which  is 
current.  But  we  must  take  pains  to  be  abso- 
lutely accurate,  and  then  we  must  speak  out 
unflinchingly  the  facts  which  demand  atten- 
tion and  which  dare  not  be  obscured. 

(2)  We  must  challenge  the  conscience  of 
Great  Britain  and  America  specially. 

The  South  American  Journal  states  that 
Great  Britain  has  £555,142,041  capital  invested 
in  South  America,  and  that  her  dividends  from 
this  investment  in  1909  were  £25,437,030.  That 
is  more  each  month  than  the  total  expenditure 
on  evangelical  missions  in  South  America  in 
a hundred  years.  In  the  face  of  such  a state- 
ment as  I quoted  at  the  outset  from  the  Bishop 
of  the  Falkland  Islands,  can  a nation  conscien- 
tiously do  such  a thing  as  this,  draw  a stream 
of  national  wealth  from  these  lands  and  con- 
tribute to  them  no  moral  or  spiritual  treasure, 
or  next  to  none? 

(3)  We  must  temperately  but  firmly  dispute 
the  position  that  the  whole  Church  is  facing 
the  whole  world  task  or  is  entitled  to  claim 
the  divine  resources  available  for  a world  em- 
prise alone,  if  it  excludes  from  its  view  the 
need  and  appeal  of  Latin  America. 


24 


Board  of  Foreigo  Missions 
of  the 

Presbyterian  Church  in  the  IT.  S.  A. 
15t>  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York 


Price,  2 cents 


1865 


Nov.  1,  1912 


THE  WILLIAM  DARLING  PRESS,  NEW  YORK 


